Some questions on Computational Biology!

Hello All,
I am about to graduate from Chemical Engineering with a Master's degree.
During my graduate research which involved some kind of modeling of
protein adsorption, I got interested in the field of computational
biology. Because of my interest in this field, I have decided to go for a
master's in computer science, which I think is necessary to be good in
this field.
Now before going any further, let me tell you that I am pretty new to
this field, and desperately need some guidance and advice. So, I would
like to ask all those gurus in this field as to what kind of future does
computational biology hold? Is the field well-recognized in the academic
world? My interest in this field is also partly because I want to make a
contribution to the field of medicine, from a computer scientist's point of
view. Like, for example, modelling the series of events which lead to a
disease, and predicting it much before the physical symptoms show up. I
don't know whether all these is feasible or not, but I want to know what
are the hot topics of research in computational biology related to medicine.
And finally, I also want to know the kind of job opportunities this field
offers. Can any one answer my questions? Thank You very much in Advance,
Raghu.